Rebecca O’Bern
make amends with all the lilies at the cemetery father kevin tells me your mother still
recedes into the soil, & will for a while new life will sprout of bone yet these flowers of
memory wilt daily (how to befriend petals of lost time) even the thought is laughable &
so I laugh, crush a bloom try to lift my spirit as it falls to earth just as I carried her to the
bathroom then into her special chair at the nursing home in fact, yes I transform every
flower, blade of green grass sapling, yes, sapling into a single spoon, silver here we go
polish with antique cloth, & place deliberately onto the headstone yes, there you are, peace
Author Bio
Rebecca O’Bern is associate poetry editor of Mud Season Review. Her work has been published in Ample Remains, Black Coffee Review, Hartskill Review, Storm Cellar, Buddhist Poetry Review, and other journals. A recipient of the Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize, she’s also received honors from UCONN, Connecticut Poetry Society, and Arts Café Mystic. She’s a graduate of the MFA Program at Southern Connecticut State University, where she taught in the English Department. Find her on Twitter @rebeccaobern.